In the Name of the Father, and of the son and of the Holy Spirit
My dear Father, brothers and sisters: Happy Feast!
In today’s resurrectional Gospel reading from chapter 17 we are a few chapters further on from chapter 14’s story of the disciples on the sea of Galilee which we heard last Sunday. Peter, James and John had just witnessed the miracle of the Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor where His whole body and clothing radiated with the Uncreated Light of the Godhead, and were coming down dazzled and amazed at what they had just experienced. At the bottom of the domed hill of Mount Tabor, the Lord with three of his disciples encounter a crowd of people and in their midst they come across the father of a child who is possessed with a demon that could not be driven out by the Lord’s remaining nine disciples. As we shall see, this Gospel builds upon the same theme that was set out in our reading last week, namely the nature of faith in God, and the importance of cultivating a real, living and robust faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. To interpret today’s Gospel let us turn to our holy Father St Nikolai Velimirovic.
And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.
The word “lunatic” seems today harsh and very politically incorrect, though in fact, it is a very direct translation of the Greek word seleniazetai or literally ‘moon-struck’. For just as seleniazetai derives from selene, the Greek word for the moon, so our rather dated English word lunatic itself derives from the Latin word for the moon, luna. Behind this desperate father’s use of this word lay a belief that it was the malign influence of the moon, God’s creation itself, that was the direct cause of the child’s suffering. However, as becomes clear, our Lord shows that the real cause of this child’s suffering was not the rising and sinking of the moon, or any other superstitious associations, but the plotting of the demonic spirits who may have coincided their attacks on the poor child with the movement of the moon.
In reality, all that God has made is good; and all God’s creation is of service to men, for their help and not for their destruction … The evil spirit is itself answerable for the torments and suffering of this lad, not the moon. Were God in His love for mankind, not to restrain the evil spirits and protect men from them … the evil spirits would, in the twinkling of an eye, crush the entire human race in soul and body, as grasshoppers crush seeds in the field.
And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.
The Lord Himself, together with Peter, James and John had been away seeing the Uncreated Light on Mount Tabor and had left the rest of the Apostles alone. The demons perhaps seized on the child at this time seeing their vulnerability.
They were not able to do this, firstly, because of their own lack of faith; secondly, because of the father’s lack of faith; and thirdly, because of the total lack of faith of the scribes who were present, for it is said that there were scribes around the disciples, disputing with them.
St Nikolai then unpacks this further, saying that we see nothing of the faith of other parents in the Gospel that present their own suffering children or servants to the Lord for healing in this particular father. Rather there is a note of criticism and even complaint in the man’s reference to the apostles’ failing to heal him. There is no notion or insight here that perhaps his own faithlessness may be in some way to blame for the lack of healing. St Nikolai also points to this story in St Mark’s Gospel where this father is reported to have said – ‘if thou canst do any thing … help us!’. This being the God of Heaven and Earth He is talking to of course!
Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.
As we have so often remarked, our compassionate Saviour crucified Himself daily for everyone who came to Him, serving them, healing them, teaching them from morning until night. However, we see in this saying of the Lord, a rare insight into the Lord’s forebearance His long-suffering with us dense and sinful creatures. And yet despite the constant service, the daily pouring-out of Himself He continues to give and to heal despite our utter unworthiness.
St Nikolai says –
The Lord addressed this reprimand to all in general: to all the unbelieving and those of little faith in Israel, and to all who were standing before Him: the sick boy’s father, the disciples and especially the scribes.
And we might add on in parenthesis, to us – to you and to me, here today. A generation which believes all sorts of nonsense, of the moon causing madness and suffering, and so many other strange and occult beliefs, and yet does not see the Truth, even when it is directly under their noses and in front of them. Faithless but also as the Lord says, perverse and corrupt. As St Nikolai says –
Unbelief is the consequence; corruption is the cause … Corruption is the state of having fallen away from God, and unbelief is the darkness, weakness and horror into which a man is plunged when he falls away from God.
After the Lord had rebuked those present as well as us here listening to this Gospel, and pricked their consciences, we then hear –
And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.
Again, St Nikolai reminds us, see how – by clearly rebuking the devil and driving away the evil spirit – the Lord rejects all superstitious beliefs that the moon was the cause of the child’s malady. It was not the moon, nor we should say the evil eye but the demons.
If the encounter with the father and the child and the exorcism of the demon is the first part of the Gospel, the second part is this follow-up and debrief with the disciples.
Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out?
It is difficult not to feel sorry for the disciples here, who must have been rather embarrassed at their own impotence. Afterall, they had been granted, ‘power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease’. Yet, the disciples here were utterly unable to drive out this spirit.
And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief:
Our Lord is simple and to the point. They could not work this miracle because of their lack of faith. As St Nikolai says –
The greater the faith, the greater the power; the less the faith, the less the power.
for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
When we hear this saying about moving mountains, we then might ask, well why do we not hear of our Lord moving mountains in the Gospel? This of course is a stupid thought. Afterall, He was the one who formed the mountains, as it says in the Psalm – ‘Which by his strength setteth fast the mountains; being girded with power’. We must remember that our Lord was not just a Thamaturge, a worker of wonders for the sake of it. He had no need of the praise of men, His own creatures, nor of their money. Our Lord works wonders and miracles not for praise but for salvation. As St Nikolai asks, however –
Is it … a greater miracle to move mountains than to turn water into wine, to give great increase to a small amount of bread, to drive demons out of men, to heal all manner of sickness, walk on the water or calm with a word – or a thought – stormy seas and winds.
Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
Our Lord then gives a final word to his dispirited disciples to encourage them and us, that spiritual feats are only possible through prayer and fasting. Note here that the Lord does not make this optional or either /or we must both pray and fast. As St Nikolai explains –
By fasting, the vessels of body and soul are cleansed of their filthy contents of worldly passions and vices; by prayer, the grace of the Holy Spirit is drawn down into the empty, cleansed vessel – and the fulness of faith consists in the abiding of God’s Spirit in man.
And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And they were exceeding sorry.
Then we hear this final word of the Lord to His disciples reminding them once again of His future torment and suffering, but also of His Resurrection. What connection does this have, we might ask, to what has gone before. Perhaps our Lord was reminding His disciples that when they would go on to work great miracles that they must not expect anything but suffering and rejection from the world, a world that has first hated Him. Yet despite the prediction of future suffering there is also the promise of resurrection and glorification, the promise of Tabor the promise also of Gethsemane.
My dear fathers, brothers and sisters: over these past few days we have reached the end of our Dormition Fast and are now in the afterglow of the Feast. Now that the Fast has ended, however, let us not forget the importance of maintaining these two pillars and two weapons of the spiritual life – Prayer and Fasting. Through these two bastions let us seek to sow and germinate that small, that tiny grain of faith within us, remembering that even though it may be small, like the mighty mustard seed it is full of power, even the very power of God.
Amen.